Knitting Blue

I’m on the last repeat or so of my Shetland Seas Shawl before the edging, based on weighing the skein of yarn before and after knitting a few rows. I’ve been ‘knitting blue’ since late on Saturday. And I love it.

I haven’t had the camera, the light and the shawl together to take a decent picture, but here’s the yarn I have left.

IRL, especially a couple pattern repeats ago, it rather reminds me of some of the blue pools like this one, Celestine, at Yellowstone.

This afternoon, I should be able to do a pinned-out progress shot. And then I should be casting off within another day or so….if my calculations are correct! (Otherwise, I’ll be frogging and reknitting!)

This is how I figured out how many repeats I could do to eke the most out of this Evolution color-change yarn. The edging is 14 rows, compared to 10 rows for a regular pattern repeat. Each right side row increases the stitch count by 4. And the bind-off takes a surprisingly large amount of yarn always, even more so for lace, where a loose, elastic cast-off is critical for blocking success.

So it sounds rather like a calculus problem, or at least advanced algebra, but instead of doing a differential equation with rate of change and area under the curve or something, I’m just going to round up and figure out how much yarn I need to do, say, 4 rows (right now, using 5 grams of yarn, but that number will be higher right before the edging); then calculate that I need about 18 rows’ worth of yarn at that rate to do the edging (allowing an extra two rows’ worth for the increasing row length, and an extra two rows’ length for the bindoff — really). That should leave me with a little extra. Should.

So as I have been getting done with repeats, I check the weight of the yarn that’s left to make sure all is well. So far, my approximation math is looking good. (Hey, it worked for Forest Canopy!)